1. Money and Elections Running for office costs a lot of money.
Items spent on campaigning range from radio and television commercials to office rent.
Parties and their candidates draw their money from two main sources: 1)Private contributors and 2)Public treasury.
Private sources are:
Small Contributors
Wealthy Individuals- “fat cats”
Candidates- i.e. Ross Perot
Nonparty groups- Political action committees.
Temporary Organizations
*Fundraisers, such as luncheons, are also very common sources of money.*

2. Public Funding of Presidential Campaigns
-Every person who completes a federal income tax return can check off three dollars to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund.
The monies in the fund are then used every four years to finance:
Preconvention Campaigns
National Conventions
Presidential Election Campaigns
These public funds from the government are known as Subsidies- a grant of money, usually from the government.

3. Hard Money vs. Soft Money
-Hard Money- money raised and spent to elect candidates for Congress and the White House.
*restrictions are made on the amount of hard money that is able to be used in an election by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and federal campaign finance laws.*
-Soft Money- funds given to party organizations for “Party building activities”.
*Up until 2002, no restrictions were placed on the amount of soft money that could be raised in a given election.*
“More loophole than Law” -LBJ

4. Political Action Committees
Political Action Committees (PACs)- the political extensions of special interest and other organizations with a stake in electoral politics.
-for example, business associations, labor unions, and professional organizations.
PACs can only raise funds from their members
They cannot seek contributions from the general public.
-The only PACs that can raise money from the public are “unconnected committees”- each of these is established as their own entity- not as a unit of a larger organization.
PACs distribute the money that they raise to candidates who 1) are sympathetic to the PACs policy goals, and 2) have a reasonable chance of winning their races.

5. Super PACs
A super PAC is a political committee whose primary purpose is to influence elections, and which can take unlimited amounts of money, outside of federal contribution limits, from rich people, unions and corporations, pool it all together, and spend it to advocate for a candidate — as long as they are independent and not coordinated with the candidate.

6. Super PACs
How did the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case change the work of political strategists?
Why do political strategists prefer to work for super PACs over campaigns?
Why is it dramatically easier to raise money for a super PAC than it is to raise money for a presidential campaign?
What is your opinion about the increased amount of outside money in politics?
What predictions do you have about how the increased amount of outside money in politics will affect presidential elections?
How did the increased amount of outside money affect the 2012 election?